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[Pages 405-407]

Ermershausen, Germany

Village in the Hoffheim i. Ufranken county

Population:

Year

No of Residents

of them Jews

%

1814

441

111

25.2%

1867

588

101

17.2

1871

560

85

15.2

1890

640

113

17.7

1900

598

104

17.4

1910

575

70

12.2

1925

543

67

12.3

1933

583

58

10.0

7.3.1937

--

49

17.5.1939

553

33

6.0

7.2.1942

18

23.4.1942

3

9.6.1942

0

Religious classification in Percentages in 1933:

Jews

Catholics

Protestants

10

2.5

87.5

It is known that in Ermershausen there was an organized community in the second half of the 18th century. The community registry remains from 1769, which opens with the principles of the establishment of the community. The last entry in the registry was in 1927.

Under Nazi rule (1933-1938)

In 1933, the Ermershausen community was under the district Rabbinate of Burgpreppach and under its authority were a synagogue (established in the first half of the 18th century), a one-room school house, a mikveh and a cemetery (beginning in 1832) in which the neighboring community of Maroldsweisach also buried its dead. A women's burial society (Hevrah Kadisha) also operated in the community. The community budget (in 1930) was 1,968 Marks. In the school year 1932/33, religious classes were offered to 13 children.

The teacher, Herman Mahlermann, who was also the community Chazan, was arrested, together with a number of other Jews from neighboring communities, in the spring of 1934, for a blood libel made up by the Gestapo (see Burgpreppach). After Mahlermann was released, taking several months, he moved to become the teacher in the nearby Hammerlburg community. During that same year another teacher, Herbert Adler, took over his position as teacher in Ermershausen. Adler emigrated a week before the November 1938 riots.

The majority of Jews in Ermershausen made a living from the sale of livestock. While the scope of their business declined a great deal after the Nazis came to power, they were still making a living then since they had fields that they worked. Also, their relationship with the local farmers remained good, different from the situation in other villages in the area.

From 1934 until November 10, 1938, only 10 Jews left Ermershausen.

Process of the Destruction of the Community

Year

Left

Emigrated

Deported

1934

1

1

1935

2

1

1937

4

1938

8

1939

9

8

1940

1

1941

1

2

25.4.1942*

15

23.9.1942

2

Total

13

25

17

*See below.

The Holocaust

In the riots on the night of November 10, 1938, most of the Jewish males in Ermershausen were arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Correspondingly the furniture and objects belonging to the synagogue were damaged and the ritual articles were destroyed. The local Jews were forced by the rioters to burn the fields outside the village and their Torahs with their own hands.

Of the 38 Jews of Ermershausen who left between the years 1934-1941, 25 of them emigrated to the US and the rest moved to other cities in Germany, of them seven to Wuerzburg and two to Berlin.

On April 22, 1942, 15 of the remaining 18 Jews of Ermershausen were sent to Wuerzburg and deported from there to Izbica near Lublin on the 25th. On July 8th of that same year, the last three Jews of Ermsershausen were sent to an old age home in Schweinfurt, and on September 23rd two of them were deported via Wuerzburg to Ghetto Theresienstadt. The fate of the third is unknown.

After the war not one Jew returned to Ermershausen. The synagogue building remains and the Jewish cemetery exists and is under the care of the National Union of Jewish Communities in Bavaria. There are no Jews in Ermershausen today.